The Pakistan Body Count, a website run and managed by Zeeshan Usmani, a professor at Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute has documented over 124 drone attacks since 2004 and as per the last documented attack on May 11th 2010 in Miranshah shows that only 30 Al-Qaeda operatives have perished in the last six years but more significantly 1266 civilians were killed and over 445 civilians were left injured to run a tally of 2.5% as the strike rate against the Al-Qaeda operatives.

A strike rate of 2.5% is a failure by any measure, its not a statistical probability, or the result of a mathematical equation analysis but actually 97.5% innocent people have lost their lives in lieu of a high flying sophisticated drone targeting an Al-Qaeda terrorist, and by coincidence they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time to have been killed instead. I believe such targeting success rate can at best be adjudicated to handing a blind man an automatic machine gun hoping to get lucky in killing people around him, even then I predict he will have a higher strike rate than these remote controlled drones. The heavy cost of the ongoing American War on Terror in Pakistan has continued to pay its dividends, it has significantly contributed in helping Pakistan stand on the verge of an economic melt down, while sadly the political leadership remains oblivious to the disasters brewing around them, kept at bay with the lucrative smell of crisp dollar bills that funnel their way from Washington to Islamabad in lieu of their silence and their deliberate ignorance. Zeeshan Usmani a Fulbright scholar who studied at Florida Tech did his doctoral research was to develop a computer model which would accurately simulate how suicide bombs explode, surprisingly the study was so accurate that it beat previous prediction models by a long margin, for example Usmani estimates that fatalities can be cut by 12 percent if crowds are in vertical rows rather than circular or random formations. His insights into the protective measures on how to protect against such explosions put many security installations to shame.

Quite naturally such a researcher is natural to documenting the suicide bombers and drone attacks that have besieged our country. What so ever be the logic by the American and the Pakistani government to continue this failing offensive against the terrorists, the facts over three years calculated by Dr. Zeeshan seem to indicate that this offensive is not working and is killing more innocent civilians then being a strategic attempt to target Talibans.

The results are shocking and definitely worth renewing a string of serious political dialogue on the need for such collateral damage where hundreds of Pakistanis loose their lives in lieu of killing a bare handful of Al-Qaeda / Taliban terrorists. I have continued to lobby against an all out war and still to-date believe that a genuine peace attempt be made to solve this crisis. modern warfare simply cant be that blind, unless its deliberately meant to target everyone else except the intended terrorists !!!

18 Comments

Life is cheap, and a large numbers of our fellow citizens are expendable. The disdain with which the state treats its citizens in urban centres is appalling. Why would one expect anything better in remote areas.

Rather than the large numbers of deaths, we remain transfixed by the fact that the US is carrying out these attacks. Our military has repeatedly asked the US to provide them with armed, rather than reconnaissance drones. If they are provided, then what? Our military will take the lead in killing its own citizens?

How ever, playing the devils advocate, the opposite is also true. Any drone attack that does occur does not occur at random. Intelligence is being generated from within the targeted area. Many sources have also claimed that the drone attacks have some support with the local population as these attacks have forced the Taliban fighters to flee populated areas and take refuge in the wild. It may also be the case that alot of intelligence is sourced via the local population harnessing tribal communication channels or clandestine tipping off's to security agencies.

However, whether the drone attacks are good or bad, whether necessary or not, whether they have local support or not, the killing of civilian lives cannot be justified under the guise of "collateral damage". The statistics above are quite shocking though not surprising. Regardless of the high number of fatalities, even the death of a single non-combatant should not be justifiable.

[ The state and the government of Pakistan will have to thoroughly investigate and rectify this alarming trend. While actors like the 7/7 bombers and Faisal Shahzad are an obvious embarrassment to Pakistan and to the Pakistani communities in the West, so are the growing number of rabid, tech-savvy young people floating around various interactive websites to mouth the most obnoxious ideas about Islam and politics. There are websites out there glorifying utter mad men and the most twisted conspiracy theories . . . ]

A recent Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy report on the views of 550 residents of the tribal areas where drone attacks occur, authored by anthropologist Farhat Taj — who claims that professionals in FATA view the drone missiles as "liberators." A more careful look at the survey, however, reveals that the report's findings are so split down the middle as to be inconclusive.

When asked whether the drone attacks bring about "fear and terror in the common people," 45% of respondents answered in the affirmative. "Fear and terror" are powerful words. When respondents were asked whether they thought the drone strikes were "accurate in their strikes," 48% answered "No," and 42% believed the missiles increased anti-American sentiment in the tribal areas. 100 of those approached declined to answer. These results are at best inconclusive, but by no means provide a solid argument in favor of drone attacks.

Dialogues will perhaps provide the best solution for the ongoing insurgency in Pakistan; because war alone cannot help win a war, we need to win the hearts and minds of people so that the war can be won.

I wonder if you would have used some common sense (which you clearly lack), it would have saved you a lot of time that you wasted bashing your poor keyboard..LOL

97.5% of people killed by drones are innocent civilians, women and children included…who is denying this fact? The fact which we all are denying here is that…isn't it what the drones are being sent for??

There is no wonder about my low IQ as mediocre people usually have this natural level but what is going on with your special senses which you surely have that you are not understanding my message tone accurately .Read carefully I am further strengthening your accuracy of judgment about drone attacks on poor civilians with statistical data.

The number of civilian casualties reported by drone attacks is very high, as free media has little or no access to these far flung areas many of these figures are fabricated. Also does anyone suggest an alternate on how these militants can be killed or captured if drones are not used? I.e. what is the alternate solution?

Our real drones actions are our state of lawlessness in which our govt representatives are fully responsible of doing casualties like rule of law ,moral values of system and mandatory honesty on higher positions.

So we have to get rid of such weak and alien like people who have no concern about the real issue.

Stopping the drones are responsibility of army and they are failed in it and in return they are the most funded and privileged institute of Pakistan.Get the facts/data that we are in state of war and after few months perks and promotions are being awarded to army men by neglecting all other areas of concern.

So our army is acting like miltiary drones and our presidency is keeping storage of civilians drones for poor people of Pakistan.

@Nazia could you please elaborate upon what more possibly the Pakistan Army do? As they have carried out operations in Sawat and South Waziristan in an utmost professional manner. The success of the operations can be gauged by the decline in the frequency of suicide bombing. Perhaps we can appreciate the good steps every now and then.

If you justify Pakistan army operations in Swat and waziristan then I think you have no right to speak against Russians who made same kind of military actions on Bosnian.

Get some history facts, Russians had faced same kind of terrorism attacks before they went for operations on Muslim majority.

After such forceful combats in our settled lands and leaving 3.5 million IDP now we have left our right to intervene in India matters who even not used any kind of gunship helicopters against Kashmiris or ever executed such kind of unplanned human disaster on the name of operation against terrorism which is still their major problem.

The acts of Pakistan army had left no space for us to carry on our logical support to Palestinians who are facing same kind of charges from Israels for many years which we have put on our Pukhtoon and beard people.

I am sure after few years some stomach ache would be felt in any retired core commander and he would reveal that all such unjustified kind of operation to handful of insurgents had some other foreign agendas or personal gains of few military brass.

Who told you that success of operation can be measured by declining of suicidal bombing?

Was there a single case of suicidal bombing in our civilian areas before or soon after 911 so how you think Musharraf and army had any empirical and logical reasons to join hands with US forces to start operations in our land.

Our poor investigation reports on suicidal bombing incidents are showing us random and confused reasons of such attacks on LEA and poor people and our army is fully cashing such situation in its favor.

Now I give you little clue that after demoralization of service people in uniform, our policy makers in uniform and bureaucracy have made billion dollar deals in the name of defense deals, security equipments and installations, creating hundreds of security agencies which are run by army officers.They all received heavy kickbacks in all major to minor deals and time would surely reveal all such facts.

Induction of Black water like agencies and giving them free hand is also support my idea in which agencies men are getting huge monetary benefits.

Have you ever thought that if you have such a modern army with 4 or5 intelligence agencies and even then we all seeing helpless therefore we call black water and dyne corps like company and giving them secure basis.

If our land is so dangerous that human bombs can any time create havoc then how these aliens can give us desired results.Do they know our land chemistry better than us and our so called brave army?

So such kind of suicidal bombing actually increase our dependency on more defense deals and updated safety equipments and subsequently lowered the level of efficiency of our professional and intelligence capabilities

Strategic bombing through modern air force and huge artillery attacks are meant striking at the enemy's heartland,his cities, industry and communications but we all applied on our land and people for finding/killing few homegrown terrorists.

If you use hammer for killing ants, the ants would surely be killed but it would show your weakness in using wrong tactics to handle intruders like that.

Where is UN and its so called charter of Human Rights.Any one having a little bit sense can justify such a huje misacre and violation of basic human rights? Lanat de we pa amrica au da hagha pa malgaro